Strange Places
Some plays are born strange, some achieve strangeness, and some have strangeness thrust upon them (or upon their characters, at least). We consider one of each type herein.
Sarah Kane’s Dazzling Apologia Pro Morte Sua, 4.48 PSYCHOSIS, at Iron Crow
The answer to critic Michael Billington’s question how you award aesthetic points to a 75-minute suicide note is, you award aesthetic points to a suicide note the same way you award aesthetic points to anything else: Is it well-written, does it show you something new, does it move you? The answers to these follow-up questions, with this piece (which is admittedly impossible not to view as a suicide note) are yes, yes, and yes.
Kinks Above The Waistline: VENUS IN FUR at the REP
How well one likes this production depends very much upon how appealing one finds the constant morphing and switching place of characters. If shifting psychodynamics are your thing, this version caters to your taste.
Fresh Production, Unfresh Play: AMADEUS at Center Stage
The story of why and how Salieri did Mozart in (this is not necessarily historical) is encumbered – there is no other word for it – by Salieri’s narration. Nor is this a “just the facts, ma’am” narration; this is the tortured but ploddingly literal tale of Salieri’s failed relationship with God himself, of God’s betrayal of a bargain Salieri feels God made with him, by giving Mozart a divine talent that should have been Salieri’s. It is also a sort of greatest-hits retrospective of Mozart’s compositions, especially his operas. That’s an awful lot of freight for a single play to carry.
A Wonderful New Theater Inaugurated In Side-Splitting Style: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s New Home
It’s hard for me to stop saying wow. Wow to the theater, a three-tier structure that echoes the layout of Shakespeare’s own Globe (albeit with the modern convenience of a roof – and some others including two bars and ergonomic seating that assures there is no standing for today’s groundlings). Wow to the play, one of Shakespeare’s funniest. Wow to the acting, the direction, the staging, the lighting. The audience is assured of over two hours of being in stitches.
They Do Not Serve Who Only Stand and Wait: THE UNDERSTUDY at Everyman
Both the play and the play-within-the-play preach the same sermon: You may be trying to do something that attains meaning by being witnessed and judged, but in truth no one will ever see you or judge you. As an understudy, you are condemned to eliciting what meaning you can from what one frustrated character in A Chorus Line summed up as “dancing for my own enjoyment.”
About Jack Gohn
I lived in London and Vienna before coming to the United States, and grew up mainly in Ann Arbor. I was writing plays and stories as early as grade school. My undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, where I first reviewed theater, for the college paper, were succeeded by graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University, where I earned a doctorate in English Literature.